Michael Sam’s college coaches rallied around him on Wednesday, praising him for the courage he had shown in coming out to the public as he prepares to enter the NFL draft. The 24-year-old defensive end will become the first openly gay player in the league if he is signed by a team this May, an event that seems highly probable after his stand-out senior year at the University of Missouri. The Tigers’ head coach, Gary Pinkel, said that he could not be more proud.

“The last 24 hours have been amazing,” said Pinkel, who confessed to tearing up when he first saw the player’s statement on television on Sunday. “This decision is going to affect our society, in hopefully a very, very positive way.”

Pinkel was speaking, along with several other coaches, at a media session hosted in the press box at the University of Missouri’s Faurot Field. From that vantage point it was possible to look out and see the tribute to Sam that had been made behind the north end zone. It is the only section of the stadium not to have fixed seating, instead boasting only a curved grass verge with a giant letter ‘M’ marked out in white stone. Overnight, someone had taken it upon themselves to carve an additional ‘S’ and ‘A’ out of the snow that had blanketed the stadium, spelling out the linebacker’s name. “Pretty cool,” was Pinkel’s verdict, although he claimed ignorance of who might have orchestrated such a stunt. He was more forthcoming on the timing of Sam’s announcement. When asked by one journalist if Missouri’s coaches had encouraged Sam to stay quiet about his sexuality until after the college season was over, Pinkel responded very strongly in the negative. “Somebody reported that, but I don’t care what they say, that was 100% his choice,” said the coach. “One hundred percent his choice. Whatever he decided, we were going to do. And that’s fact, and anybody that says any different, hasn’t done their research or they’re not telling the truth.”Pinkel himself had learned about Sam’s sexuality last August, along with the rest of his team. The linebacker had come out during a preseason get-to-know you session organised by the coaches. Players were split into small groups of 8-10 people and encouraged to take turns to share something about themselves. Sam had already spoken to one or two team-mates about the matter, but chose that moment to tell the rest of his colleagues that he was gay.Defensive line coach Craig Kuligowski recalled it on Wednesday as a moment that most people took in their stride. “Everybody in the room was like, ‘OK’,” he told the Guardian. “I think it was something that, if not known, was certainly suspected by lots of guys on the team. Not everybody, but I think it was something that wasn’t a surprise to us either.”Strength and conditioning coach Pat Ivey had been aware for longer than most. He had helped to organise an initiative, titled ‘You Can Play’, last April that was designed to raise awareness among school athletes about the specific challenges faced by the LGBTQ community. “After that meeting, I was putting up the computer, and Mike came over said ‘hey coach, that was pretty good’,” recalled Ivey on Wednesday. “I said, ‘thanks Mike, I appreciate you’. He said, ‘No coach, that was really good’. And I said ‘thank you’. He said ‘no coach, I was really sceptical before I came, and after the presentation, you guys did a really good job.’“I said ‘Mike I really appreciate that. I’ll see you in the morning, and have a good night’. He said ‘coach: and I know I can play’. And I said, ‘OK, I get it Mike’. We shook hands, and that kind of built the bridge from where we were to where we are now.”Across the board, the coaches insisted that Sam’s team-mates had been accepting of his sexuality.

“I know a lot of his team-mates said ‘Mike, we like you a lot better since you came out’,” said Ivey. “And I think what that meant is, he was able to be himself 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and didn’t have to worry about who was thinking something, or who was knowing something, he didn’t have to worry about that.”

Ivey felt confident, too, that Sam would handle life in an NFL locker room just fine. The coach enjoyed a brief career himself in the league, spending time with the San Diego Chargers, Detroit Lions, Denver Broncos and Green Bay Packers. Prior to that he, like Sam, had played defensive end at the University of Missouri. He said that the atmosphere in college and professional locker rooms was almost exactly alike.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what goes on in locker rooms,” said Ivey. “There are people assuming that Michael Sam is not a tough person. That would be a mistake. He is mentally tough, he is physically tough.

“There are people that are assuming he won’t be able to handle himself in an NFL locker room, but no one can tell you the difference between an NFL locker room and a locker room in the [South Eastern Conference – in which Missouri plays]. No one can tell you that difference. It’s the same guys, they’re just really good football players.

“So I don’t think people are giving Mike enough credit for the person he is. And he will adapt. People are making assumptions about locker room culture, and they don’t really know, they’ve never been in an NFL locker room or a college locker, room, so they don’t know how Mike is going to do. He’s going to do well.”

"Sam" is spelled in the snow on the north side of Missouri's Memorial Stadium, Monday, Feb. 10, 2014 in support of Michael Sam. Photograph: L.G. Patterson/AP

Indeed, the consensus among Sam’s coaches was that whichever team took a chance on him was likely to get a better player for the fact that he had got this weight off his shoulders. Sam produced his best football of his college career as a senior, recording 11.5 sacks and 19 tackles for a loss. While much of that had to do with increased experience, coaches say the player – already a vocal leader in the locker room – seemed even more present than before.

“He sang a little louder than before,” said Ivey. “The guys, the team themselves would ask him, ‘Hey Mike, would you lead us in a song? Hey Mike can you do a performance for us. He does this 300 performance of pretending to send the troops out to battle, and it was awesome. People wanted more of those special moments from him and to share them with the team.”

Pinkel said that not having to worry about hiding his private life allowed Sam to really concentrate on becoming the best player he could be. “It helped him to focus,” said the head coach “To get that off his plate, and he also had his team-mates embrace it, which on a confidence level had to make him feel like a million bucks and probably allowed him to play freely and focused and have a great year. I think there’s probably a strong correlation with that.”

Whether or not Sam will excel in the pros is, of course, another question entirely. Kuligowski acknowledged that the player did not boast the prototypical body type that NFL scouts look for at defensive end, and likewise might lack the straight-line speed required to switch to the outside linebacker position. But he also highlighted the fact that Sam had already excelled in what many people consider to be the toughest conference in college football.

“We feel like this is the best competition that you can go against in college, and therefore making it closest to the NFL, and he was able to do those things in our league, so I would expect him to be able to do some of those things in the NFL,” said Kuligowski. “We’ve had some guys drafted in the first round, we’ve had some guys drafted in the later rounds. I could see some of them that he’s better than, and some of them that, perspective-wise, he may not be as good as.

“But I think somebody’s going to pick him up for what he does good – rush the passer, and then he’ll make the team and do a good job for that team.”

Could Sam’s decision to come out now, though, ultimately affect where or whether he gets drafted? “You know, I really don’t think so,” continued Kuligowski. “I think by him announcing it now, he will then be able to not be as much of a distraction to whatever team selects him. So I think that he’ll be OK.”

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